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Immigration

The many faces of the immigrant experience are revealed on POV, from American Aloha: Hula Beyond Hawaii to Made in L.A., the Emmy Award-winning documentary about Hispanic women who work in modern-day sweatshops, to Rain in a Dry Land, about Somali Bantu families coming to the United States. Whether people migrate in order to find better employment opportunities like the teachers in The Learning or to flee from a war zone as in The Betrayal, POV places a human face on the issues which immigrants face.

Related Films

The Caretaker is a portrait of two women who are outsiders in the place they call home. Haru is a 95-year-old Japanese-American migrant who was interned during World War II. Joesy is an undocumented worker from Fiji who cares for her.

The Sixth Section captures the dynamic form of cross-border organizing through the story of 'Grupo Union,' a small band of Mexican immigrants in upstate New York who devote themselves to raising money in order to rebuild the town they left behind.

Liliana Luis is a Mexican-American teenager rushing headlong into the turbulence of puberty as she tries to finish high school. The saga of the Luis family started in P.O.V.'s 2000 film, La Boda, continues in this story of one family's drive towards a better future.

A spunky Vietnamese teenager named Mai gets the chance of a lifetime — to study in the United States. From cosmopolitan Hanoi to the heart of the Deep South, Mai’s unforgettable journey offers an outsider’s glimpse inside America.

Of Civil Wrongs and Rights is the untold history of the 40-year legal fight to vindicate Fred Korematsu — who resisted the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II — one that finally turned a civil injustice into a civil rights victory.

In vivid vérité detail, My American Girls: A Dominican Story captures the joys and struggles over a year in the lives of the Ortiz family, first generation immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Matthews' film captures the rewards — and costs — of pursuing the American dream.

There are over one million Gypsies living in America today, and most people don’t know anything about them. It is one man’s obsessive pursuit of justice and dignity that led filmmaker Jasmine Dellal into their hidden thousand-year-old culture.

Elizabeth is marrying Artemio in Nuevo Leon, Mexico and you are cordially invited to the wedding. Meet these two young people from the U.S.-Mexican border region whose lives are framed by the challenges of migrant life.

Political asylum — who deserves it? Who gets it? With unprecedented access, filmmakers Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson enter the closed corridors of the INS to reveal the dramatic real-life stage where human rights and American ideals collide with the nearly impossible task of trying to know the truth.

A son of Puerto Rican revolutionaries learns of his parents' past. A chronicle of his turbulent journey of self-discovery, offering a striking account of the costs of fiercely held convictions and the binding force of a son's love.

Bela Bognar is no ordinary American dad. Now a suburbanite, he once fought against Soviet domination during the Hungarian revolution. Ever since, his life has been a longing for the glories of the past. Steven Bognar crafts a moving portrait of his father's 40-year quest for identity and home.

They were leaders of the Young Lords Party, the militant Puerto Rican civil rights organization based in New York. Today, many are notable mainstream journalists, including Juan Gonzalez, Felipe Luciano and Pablo Guzman. Iris Morales makes history come alive as veterans of the movement recall their fight for equality, jobs, health care, and education.

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The Border Film Project handed out six hundred disposable cameras to two groups on opposite sides of the U.S.-Mexico border — undocumented migrants crossing the desert and American Minutemen volunteers trying to stop them.

Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson, two documentary filmmakers whose work has shown multiple times on POV, reflect on what first got them into the game, why they enjoy filmmaking, and how they adjust their filmmaking process with each production.

In this lesson, students will watch a series of video clips that put a human face on both the process of economic decision-making and the reality for millions of people working abroad in order to transfer some of their income (remittances) to loved ones back in their home countries.